The short version
- Most small business SEO is sold as a monthly retainer. Our own cost guide puts typical local SEO at $500 to $2,000 a month.
- Price depends on how competitive your market is, the state of your website, and how many services and towns you want to rank for.
- SEO takes time. Google says some changes can take several months to show up.
- Walk away from anyone who guarantees a #1 ranking. Google says no one can.
How much SEO costs depends mostly on how competitive your market is and how much work your website needs. For a small local business in Ontario, it's usually priced as a monthly retainer, with one-time projects and hourly work as the other options.
The short answer: most small businesses pay somewhere around $500 to $2,000 a month for ongoing local SEO, which is the same range we give in our website cost guide for Ontario. Less competitive towns and trades sit at the low end. Busy markets, multiple locations or a website that needs a lot of fixing push it higher.
The three ways SEO is priced
Almost every SEO quote you get will fall into one of these three models. They're not better or worse, they just suit different situations.
| Pricing model | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | Ongoing work every month: content, Google Business Profile, fixes, links, reporting | Most local businesses that want to keep growing |
| One-time project | A set job with a fixed price, like an SEO audit, a site cleanup or setting up local pages | A new site, a redesign, or fixing a specific problem |
| Hourly | Advice or work billed by the hour | Businesses with someone in-house who just needs guidance |
What the market charges
Ahrefs, an SEO software company, surveyed several hundred SEO providers about their pricing. Their figures are a useful reality check, keeping in mind they're from providers around the world and quoted in US dollars.
- Monthly retainers: the most common range was $501 to $1,000 a month.
- Hourly rates: the most common was $75 to $100 an hour, and 90% charged $150 an hour or less.
- One-time projects: the most common fee was $2,501 to $5,000.
That lines up with what we see locally. A small trade or clinic in one town is often well served in the lower part of our $500 to $2,000 range. A business competing in Mississauga or Oakville for a valuable service usually needs more.
What drives the price up or down
Two businesses can get very different quotes from the same agency, and that's normal. Here's what usually makes the difference.
How competitive your market is
Ranking a bookkeeper in Georgetown is a different job from ranking a personal injury lawyer in Mississauga. The more businesses fighting for the same searches, and the more money each customer is worth, the more work it takes to get ahead of them.
The state of your website
If your site is slow, thin on content or built in a way Google struggles with, some of the budget goes to fixing that first. A solid, well-built site means more of your money goes to growth instead of repairs.
How many services and towns you want to rank for
One service in one town is a small job. Ten services across five towns means more pages, more content and more tracking. This is often the biggest single factor in a local SEO quote.
How much content is involved
Good service pages, location pages and helpful articles take real time to write. If your SEO plan includes regular SEO content writing, expect that to be a big part of what you're paying for.
Local vs national
Local SEO focuses on your Google Business Profile, the map results, reviews, listings and pages for the towns you serve. It's usually cheaper than national SEO, where you're competing with every business in the country for the same searches. Most small Ontario businesses only need local.
How long SEO takes to work
SEO is slow, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. In its own SEO Starter Guide, Google says some changes take effect in a few hours while others can take several months, and that you'll usually want to wait a few weeks before judging whether a change helped.
In practice, in a competitive town it often takes months of steady work before you see real movement in the map results and regular search results. That's why most SEO is sold monthly.
If you need calls this month, ads are the faster option while SEO builds. Our post on Google Ads vs Local Services Ads vs SEO covers how to split the budget.
What a fair monthly SEO plan should include
Whatever you pay, you should be able to see what was done. A reasonable local SEO plan usually covers some mix of the following.
- Fixing technical problems that stop Google reading your site properly
- Writing or improving service and location pages
- Managing and posting to your Google Business Profile
- Keeping your business listings accurate across the web
- A plan for getting more reviews
- Tracking calls, forms and rankings for the searches that matter
- A plain-English report each month that says what changed and why
If a monthly report is just a page of numbers with no explanation of the work, ask what you're actually getting.
Red flags when comparing SEO quotes
Cheap SEO can end up being the most expensive kind, especially if it gets your site into trouble with Google. Google's own page, Do you need an SEO?, lists several warning signs worth knowing.
- Guaranteed rankings. Google says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. If someone promises first place, Google's advice is to find someone else.
- A "special relationship" with Google. Be wary of anyone who claims one, or offers "priority submit" to Google. Google says it never accepts money to include or rank sites in its search results.
- Secrecy. If a company won't clearly explain what it plans to do to your site, that's a problem.
- Cold emails. Google warns about SEO firms that email you out of the blue.
- Link schemes. Offers to submit your site to "thousands of search engines" or build hundreds of links for a low fee can do more harm than good.
Also watch for long lock-in contracts and plans where the agency owns your content or your Google Business Profile. Those should be yours, full stop.
Questions to ask before you sign
Google suggests asking any SEO about their past work, their experience in your industry, how long they've been in business, whether they follow Google's guidelines, and what results they expect and in what timeframe. We'd add a few of our own.
- What exactly will you do in the first three months?
- Will you tell me every change you make to my site?
- How will we measure whether this is working: calls, forms, or just rankings?
- If we stop working together, what do I keep?
Our full guide to hiring an SEO company goes deeper on what good and bad answers sound like.
Is SEO worth it for a small business?
For most local businesses, yes, as long as the plan matches the market. SEO doesn't charge you per click, and good pages and a strong Google profile keep bringing in calls after the work is done. The key is paying for real work you can see, not promises.
If you're in Halton or nearby and comparing quotes, we're happy to look at where you stand. Have a look at our SEO services in Oakville, or just ask us to check your site so you know what needs fixing before you pay anyone.
Not sure what your SEO should cost?
Tell us your business, your area and your competitors. We'll look at where you stand on Google now and tell you honestly what we'd work on first.See our local SEO services →